It's not a leveller in terms of CL winners but it is in terms of what it does in the leagues.
Bayern and Juventus absolutely dominated their leagues this decade, and that is bad. But it's not because of the CL that that has happened. Why? Because 2-3 other teams in their league will have access to that money no matter how dominant they are. Imagine how bad it would be if Bayern and Juventus alone benefitted from that? The CL is the only hope their rivals have of breaking that monopoly financially.
There are many other reasons for these things happening. Mostly it's sugar daddies and commercial. Look at how Juventus have changed their strip to appeal to the USA market. Look at how the "winter break" is usually used by clubs to make lucrative exhibition trips to the far East. That's the problem. Those are the markets that clubs like Forest will never be able to break into- the CL looks almosy doable compared to getting a slice of that.
In terms of the CL, in its 63 year history (not including this one) there have been (by my count) 21 different winners.
Nearly 1/3 of those titles have been won by just two teams (Madrid and Milan).
2/3 of titles have been won by just 6 clubs.
View attachment 33119
Note- Villa just missed off the end of my screenshot.
The point is that this is in the whole history of the European Cup. What we are seeing isn't a modern phenomenon. The same clubs have always dominated.
Steaua, Porto, Villa, Forest, Red Star, Dortmund, PSV, Feyenoord, Marseille, Hamburg, Celtic are the only 'non galactico' clubs to ever win. That's 13 titles to the non massive clubs in 64 years. Non massive clubs have as many as Real Madrid. Three of these have come in the Champions League era and we may have a fourth next week.
The European cup has never been any different. It is harder for smaller clubs to win now, but that is only because it is harder to win with so many more good sides. Forest had to beat what? 5 teams per year? And there could only be at most 4-5 other great teams in there because there were only one representative from Germany, Spain, Netherlands, Italy and Holland.